The British government formally ratified the Maastricht Treaty on closer European union Monday when it handed over the necessary documents to the Italian Foreign Ministry. They were delivered by Britain's ambassador in Rome. The ratification takes place in Rome because that is where the first treaty setting up the European Community was signed in 1957.

The British government formally ratified the Maastricht Treaty on closer European union Monday when it handed over the necessary documents to the Italian Foreign Ministry. They were delivered by Britain's ambassador in Rome. The ratification takes place in Rome because that is where the first treaty setting up the European Community was signed in 1957.

European Community ministers signed a treaty Friday on political and monetary union, cementing the EC's plans to create a super bloc with a single market, one currency and a unified voice for more than 300 million people. The Treaty on European Union was signed by foreign and finance ministers of the EC's 12 member states at a ceremony in this southern Dutch market town.

European Community ministers signed a treaty Friday on political and monetary union, cementing the EC's plans to create a super bloc with a single market, one currency and a unified voice for more than 300 million people. The Treaty on European Union was signed by foreign and finance ministers of the EC's 12 member states at a ceremony in this southern Dutch market town.

Portugal figures to become the eighth of the 12 European Community countries to ratify the Maastricht Treaty on European union when its one-chamber Parliament votes Thursday after a scheduled two-day debate. The German and Dutch parliaments have begun the ratification process and should approve without difficulty.

Germany Proposes Two-Track Path to European Unity: Support for two-track European unity may be growing in Germany as leading politicians floated the idea of countries in the fast lane pressing ahead with a monetary union on their own. "I have for a long time seen this as an option that we probably will have to resort to," said Karl Lamers, foreign policy spokesman in parliament for Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Christian Democrats.

Leaders of the 12 European Community nations hold a one-day emergency meeting Friday in this English industrial city to sift through the rubble of the European Monetary System and the Maastricht Treaty on European union. Most EC leaders believe the treaty, which mandates a common EC currency by 1999 and includes a procedure for establishing joint foreign and defense policies, must be made less ambitious to survive.

The British Parliament on Wednesday will hold a preliminary vote on the Maastricht Treaty on European union after a debate that will feature Conservative Party dissidents, dubbed Euroskeptics, opposing the government position. A favorable vote will pave the way for a final debate and vote later in the year on the controversial treaty, which is supported by Prime Minister John Major but has split his Tory party.

Who would have thought copyright law could be so interesting? Just ask Esti Miller of Culver City. She has plenty to say on the subject. Miller's essay on the North American Free Trade Agreement recently won the prestigious American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers' Nathan Burkan Memorial Competition. Miller compared NAFTA with the 1957 Treaty of Rome, which established the European economic community, and the subsequent 1992 Maastricht Treaty on European Union.

Prime Minister John Major faced further acrimony within his Conservative Party on Sunday after the press published an off-the-record conversation in which he insulted three Cabinet colleagues. The flap came at the end of a trying week in which Tory rebels joined opposition forces in Parliament to try to derail the Maastricht Treaty on European union. Major had to threaten a national election to restore party discipline and crush the mutiny.

Margaret Thatcher, battling to the end against closer European union, said Monday that she would never have signed the treaty negotiated by her successor, Prime Minister John Major. "The voluntary alliance of 12 nations (the European Community) we joined is being gradually turned into a new political entity, a European superstate," Thatcher told the House of Lords. She led a last-ditch attempt to frustrate a bill to ratify the Maastricht Treaty on European Union.

History has still to judge whether Prime Minister John Major will be considered a success, but Majorism has made the grade: The word is listed in the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary published Tuesday. The Oxford University Press hailed the 3,700-page, two-volume book as its "publishing event of the decade"--with 500,000 definitions.